But, while the IOC states international federations are responsible for running their own events, it has made clear violations of its code on tackling discrimination in sport will not be tolerated.

Principle 6 of the Olympic charter reads: “Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic movement.”

Nazi Paikidze prepares for her match at the 2015 U.S. Chess ChampionshipsCredit:
Brian Cahn/ZUMA Wire/Alamy Live News

The game has been recognised as a sport since 1999 and was included an exhibition sport at Sydney in 2000, and at the IOC-run Asian Games in 2006 and 2010.

Fide believed it was on course to be included in a summer event but the latest attempt to get chess into the Tokyo 2020 Games was rejected in August.

Instead, the IOC decided to include baseball, skateboarding, karate, surfing and climbing.

Fide has now turned its attention to trying to get blitz - a quicker version of the game with shorter time limits - included in the Winter Games schedule.

However, Grandmaster Nigel Short, the British former world title contender, said losing IOC recognition would be "severely damaging" for its chances and for the game as a whole.

"It has been a dream of Fide to get chess in the Olympic Games for many years," he said. "This is their medium term ambition to get chess incorporated.

"It is huge for them, and it would be a massive body blow to Fide if it lost its IOC recognition."

@NaziPaiki@TelegraphNews outrageous, glad you're speaking out on this. If they host it, should be no hijab required in playing area min!

Short added: "There are federations around the world which depend on this. For most, their funding comes from their sports ministries and if the IOC refused recognition this would get cut.

“For example, when I was the coach of the Iran team a decade ago their federation was receiving $2 million from the government. The Iranian federation would almost certainly lose that.

“Fide simply should not put chess players who dream of being world champion in the position of having to make moral choices about playing in such an unpleasant regime, they should be free to get on with competing.”